The invention concerns a fan heater and also an assembly incorporating such a fan heater.
As a rule, installations which include electrical and/or electronics equipment, for example switching cabinets or distribution boards, must be actively ventilated. As a result malfunctioning of components as a result of condensation water or due to too great a temperature drop, for example on account of low temperature, may be avoided. For ventilation and uniform temperature equalization of these installations fan heaters are usually employed, which are able to be located in any desired position in the switching cabinets.
Thus fan heaters are known for example, which exhibit a PTC (positive temperature coefficient) element as a heating element clamped in the cabinet. PTC elements operate automatically and are temperature limited, so that overheating in the switching cabinet or the distribution board may be reliably avoided.
The construction of known fan heaters of this kind is however very complex and they are difficult to handle. In particular the components of these fan heaters can be easily damaged by impacts or similar undesired influences from outside if handled inexpertly.
A commercially available electrical fan heater is well known for example from DE 1 727 350 U, in which the air to be heated is fed by a blower over an electrical resistor in a housing and is blown outside. Inside the housing a drive motor is arranged—together with the resistor, which is fixed to the motor—to the inner wall of the housing freely suspended and is elastically mounted.
Here the motor is connected to the housing, together with ventilator paddles and the resistor, via tension springs. The tension springs aligned radially with reference to the motor—uniformly spaced from one another—are fixed at one end to the inner housing wall and the other end is attached to the outside wall of the motor.
The assembly and the handling of this fan heater are also extremely complex and expensive, and the system exhibits an unfavorable damping behavior with regard to impacts and/or vibration and hence damage to individual components can also arise.